The Episcopal Church: We’re here for… uh… the 3.4% or something

Well, well, well. This shouldn’t be news - it’s out there in serious research for anybody who cares to dig. But a Gallup study of over 120,000 Americans once again shows that the LGBT population is very small, around 3.4%.

As another blogger rightly points out, the number could be a bit higher as some respondents would be loathe to risk coming out.

So let’s be generous and say 4%.

And, as I’ve argued before, let’s take that 4% and assume that not all are Christians. Of that small remainder who identify as Christian, let’s assume a sliver of Episcopalians. And of that sliver of a sliver, let’s pull out our microscopes to look for the subatomic % who want religious rituals for their relationships and/or to be ordained as clergy.

If you are fortunate enough to work in a research facility with a microscope strong enough to even see this particle of the population, you are looking at the mission field of The Episcopal Church, for which it’s been willing to sacrifice it’s core values, structures and entrusted Gospel mission. For which it is willing to throw away any and all other segments of the population who don’t match the particle. For which it is willing to construct an employee health plan that serves only the well being of the particle and crushes clergy families and congregations with premiums rivaling salary and housing allowance figures. For which it is willing to imperil global Christian unity and witness. For which it sequesters more and more of its leadership positions.

TEC just moved to evict about 30,000 more members of the > 96% who reside in South Carolina, as a symbolic offering to the gargantuan ego of the subatomic particle the denomination serves.

Comments

38
38 comments

The question is, how many Homosexual Denominations can there be? The first was the Metropolitan Church (at least they were honest about being a specifically Homosexual Church), then the UCC, then the Episcopalians, then the Liberal Lutherans, and now the Liberal Presbyterians.

So they are all competing for that small sliver of homosexuals, while causing tens of thousands to leave their denominations every year.

And the fact is once the homosexuals have achieved their agenda, to make the churches recognize them, then they don’t care any more and you’re not likely to see them in church.

But the fact is this is is what happens when a small group of homosexuals and their liberal non-Christian supporters get hold of a denomination. They don’t care about the churches, they just want validation of their lifestyle, even though they know God won’t give it.

Satan’s latest attack on destroying the churches is very successful, even though the New Testament is explicit on saying over and over again Christians are to have nothing to do with such sexual immorality. If we had simply followed the Word of God, we could have avoided all this. But from Genesis 1 on, we play the “did God really say?” game of agreeing to sin.

Jim in #1 - yep. As Fr. Matt warns, we are big on letting the “fierce wolves” in among the flock. So many of us must throw ourselves on Christ’s mercy for having ignored his counsel in so many ways for so long.

#2 B.Hunter - there is a bunch of old money - some would say too much of it - sitting around for TEC leaders to burn. The LGBT activists don’t need numbers to do that - just entitlement to a few levers of power, as Sarah is so good at pointing out. And that’s what’s happened.

Well, I have heard it being called a “prophetic witness”. The “cost” of this “prophetic witness” is smaller numbers! WOW! Great mission strategy- drive out the Christians so the even more minuscule numbers of homosexuals can move in and take over. SOunds great! As dr. Phil would say, How is it working for ya?

To my mind, one of the more remarkable aspects of the persecution of South Carolina’s bishop is this—-

It is just not that hard to ignore someone you don’t like. You just don’t hang out with him. If your paths have to cross, you’re polite, but you don’t have to seek his company.

It just isn’t that hard.

Instead, they sacrifice about 30,000 members and a bunch of property. It is crazy.
It just would not have been that hard to ignore Bp Lawrence and the diocese. The diocese would have been quite happy to have been left alone.

Yeah, and all this scorched earth policy for the benefit of a miniscule segment of the population that generally shows no interest in the Christian faith as once delivered, if not outright antipathy, or in long-term, committed relationships—particularly the gay male segment.

#5 Jill,
Yep. The diocese, its people, clergy and bishop would have been happy to be left alone to pursue our mission even it is the opposite of TEC’s goals. According to the diocesan website, there are about 29,000 of us. Given that several hundred to a *maybe* a thousand might decide to remain, that means somewhere around 28,000 of us have disaffiliated with TEC. IF (and that is a HUGE IF) we were to be added to ACNA, that would mean ACNA would grow by about 28%!

In the past couple of years, the Office of National Statistics in the United Kingdom surveyed the number of homosexuals in the country. This was undertaken on a basis where the names of those who were surveyed were not obtained, and where some surveyed declined to state their sexual orientation, it was assumed that the individual had a homosexual orientation.

On this basis, the percentage of homosexuals in the UK was estimated at 1%, or 1.5% if bisexuals were included. From this, a figure of 4% seems rather high - unless there are considerable differences between our nations, or in the survey questions!

Thanks, Ranger. Research by the University of Chicago a few years back put the U.S. LGBT population around 2%.

The Gallup research found more LGBT identification among younger, less educated folks - I think there is kind of a “gay chic” thing here in the U.S. and there’s quite possibly some over-reporting by younger folks who aren’t living any kind of LGBT lifestyle, but get the social lift from saying they are.

Which of course will be used by TEC to say, “We must redouble our LGBT efforts in order to reach THE YOUNG PEOPLE.”

I just don’t understand the end-game here. So…you run off all of your conservatives, families with kids, and anyone who disagrees with you. You are left with populations of people who generally don’t procreate and a generation of Episcopalians that are elderly and who want to be buried out of their family’s Church. In 20 years, who’s left??? Sarah’s right - this is shooting a cannon through the floor of your house. It makes no sense unless it is just a case of being in such a rage that you are bereft of reason.

So except for the Gallup Poll, there probably aren’t any statistics that show whether this 1-1.5% or maybe 4% are uniformly distributed throughout all states, or among all age groups, or all the SIC codes or whatever. So TEC is squandering resources to maybe attract another 10-12 Manhattan male hairdressers or a possible 1 dozen LA set designers or choreographers?

I guess it should be added that this is something in which the existing TEC base believes as an article of faith. LGBT rituals, no matter how sparse around the church as a whole, are what a good number of the remaining folks think make them better than “fundamentalists.”

#10 As a young ‘un, this has been my experience to a large degree. And of course, rather than functioning as some unified historical dialectic/monolithic idol, my friends and cohorts are all over the place spiritually:

Those youngsters who once went to church out of obligation are now spending Sunday mornings in the supermarket or the gym (body worship is a flourishing faith). That means that the only young people in the pews are true believers who really want to be there.

If you’re a “go-ahead” bishop, vicar or diocesan bureaucrat, this is a scary development. You’ve spent your career reducing the hard truths of Christ’s teaching – such as the inevitability of the Last Judgment – to carbon-neutral platitudes. Suddenly, the 20-year-olds in your flock are saying: no thanks, we’ll take the hard truths. Eek!

In the Church of England, young evangelicals are embarrassed by the thespian agonising of Rowan Williams, the outgoing Archbishop of Canterbury. If there’d been a hand-wringing event at the Olympics, he’d have shattered all records.

In the Roman Catholic Church of England and Wales, the disconnect is even more stark. Young Catholics take their cue from the traditionalist Pope Benedict XVI, rather than from dreary bishops who only occasionally wake from their slumber to mumble something about renewable energy. (Remember Jack in Father Ted? You get the picture.)

It is interesting that the figures for women and girls in the Untied States shows an increase in homosexual identification as age decreases. The figures are 1% of adult women, 4% of young adult women, and 8% of female youth, and 11% for homosexual behavior in female youth. The gay agenda is luring young people into the homosexual lifestyle, and because of the social nature of homosexuality in women, girls are most susceptible. These fignures are not from the far right. They appear in “Who’s Gay? Does it Matter?”, which is an article by homosexual researcher, Ritch Savin-Williams. Also, in case you doubt that girls can be lured into homosexual behavior, the Washington Post published “Partway Gay”, which gave a good illustration of that.
The article says of a young woman:

“She started going out with girls when she was 14, following a breakup with her boyfriend.

‘At first I thought going out with a girl was nasty,’ she says. ‘Then I went to a club and did a big flip-flop. I’ve been off and on with girls and guys since then.’”

The fact is that homosexuality is now a fad in the Western world, it is the “in” thing. And what is going on with young folks gives the lie to the claim of homosexual activists that somehow homosexuality is an innate trait, rather than a conscious or learned preference.

Directly relevant to #16, I think of what I was told recently by one of my contemporaries in giving her tale of moans and groans re raising her children. Her high school daughter, at age 15, decided she was a lesbian and had a lesbian relationship with another girl at school for two years. Now, all of a sudden at 17, she has decided she wants a boyfriend, and has now gotten rid of the girlfriend and gotten a boyfriend and now sleeps at his house on weekends. The irony is my contemporary liked the girlfriend much more than the boyfriend (I can guess for a number of reasons . . . .).

But this is a good example of how homosexuality is a chosen behavior. Of course, the homosexual activists would try to defend this by saying this girl is obviously “bisexual.”

I didn’t even have my first kiss with a girl until I was 20 . . . . Oh well. I guess the flip side is I’ve been in a stable marriage for 29 years.

I think that an important clarification needs to be made here. Although a significant number of liberal TEC advocates are indeed homosexual, I think that the motivation behind most TEC liberal advocates is to make TEC the chaplain to secular liberal ideology. Thus, TEC liberals want TEC to be the Homosexual Church because they think that will earn them point with secular liberals, rather than because they are so concerned about people who think of themselves as homosexual. The biggest thing right now in secular liberal ideology is “homosexual equivalence” and so that is what TEC’s liberal advocates are pushing.

Here’s the thing - secular liberalism is itself a religion. What liberal “Christians” are trying to do is take secular liberal religion, paste traditional Christian language on top of it, and then proclaim this the “new Christianity”. The problem is that secular liberal religion has no reason nor motivation to take the nomenclature of Christianity, which they hate and revile. It makes no sense. Secular liberal ideologues have no interest in actual Christianity, and no longer have any interest in pretending to be Christian. This latter point is what liberal “Christian” advocates don’t understand, because most of them are Baby Boomers and grew up in a time when the church still mattered.

The one question here is this - the older liberal denominations (e.g. UU’s, UC’s, etc.) are less demanding and less odd then TEC, and have had considerable more time to have brought in a liberal demographic BEFORE church attendance become unimportant. TEC is coming very late to the game. Once TEC kicks out the conservatives, spends down its endowments, and sees its elderly members die off, there won’t be very much left, and very little room for growth in this demographic. My prediction is that over the next 20 years, you will see a contraction within TEC that will shock all observers.

We are somewhat falling into a mold already. The typical Episcopal church now is a second-career divorcee or lesbian priestess, addressed as “Mother _________,” a number of elderly (mostly widows) accompanied by their professional caregivers, and a group of aging homosexuals. But there are some economic savings in this. They haven’t had to fund a children’s Sunday School for a couple of decades now. They don’t need an adult education programs because the congregation is Biblically illiterate, and both priestess and congregation like it that way. They know everything they need to know, or the priestess will tell them, and besides everyone is going to heaven anyway. Sermon prep probably just takes the priestess a couple of hours a week, leaving her free to do other things. If they are lucky, the church is in the city where parking is scarce, so they can rent out the church parking lot for business parkers. And if it’s one of those nice old Gothic piles, they can rent the sanctuary out to a professional wedding company and get money from the weddings. And as the elderly die, hopefully they leave their estates to the church and that helps replenish the funds that can be lived off of.

Eventually so many will die off the operation will go the way of the Knights of Pythias or the Odd Fellows, whose empty halls and insignia still stand in my city. But right now the system still works, so why take a risk to do anything different?

Interesting comments! Thanks Plantagenets for a youngin’s point of view and thanks for that quote from the Daily Telegraph. Amazing how that some young people really DO want the Gospel proclaimed. Just the exact opposite what TEC tells us. You know….. Be relevant and grow your parish. Drop all that *nasty* Biblical stuff - too hateful…..

I probably feel the generation gap with TEC leader types most acutely with respect to divorce. Everything that comes out from liberal baby boomers there feels like some kind of totally alien, naive John Updike style fantasy. I very clearly remember seeing some of my best friends’ families being torn apart when I was in elementary and junior high school, and it wasn’t pretty what it did to the kids. One day they’d be good students, the next flunking out, picking fights, running away, etc. I think that many of my peers have had similar experiences and go to great lengths to avoid divorce. For my religious friends that involves the Church, so for instance, a close friend of mine left the TEC in college and crossed the Tiber when the divorced priest gave a mealy-mouthed sermon on divorce.

But there are plenty of other examples. I saw the AIDS Quilt surrounded by withered, dying men when I was 7 years old, and that was one of the most terrifying, unforgettable moments of my life. So I’ll never buy the whole Glee view of homosexuality.

Strangely, the area where I do agree with older TEC liberals is in thinking that the Church may be moving towards more of a pre-Constantin model. The difference is that I went to college with Eastern Orthodox kids who made it out from behind the Iron Curtain, so I know that the early Church existed in a brutal world that placed tremendous emphasis on orthodoxy and divine protection against social force and the devil. And maybe the devil’s a little closer to home these days.

Thanks for the insightful commentary on this thread, all. #21 really grabbed me with

“the early Church existed in a brutal world that placed tremendous emphasis on orthodoxy and divine protection against social force and the devil. And maybe the devil’s a little closer to home these days.”

As noted above, 3.4% is way too high, probably a sampling error or some other sort of statistical error.

However, it’s good to remember that whether 1% or 4% suffer from same-sex attraction, they have the support of a large number of persons who have a psychological need to be liberal (possibly due to a conservative upbringing - I’ve known some of those), hip,slick, and cool, or because they fornicated, and affirming same-sex fornication affirms their own. Plus they regard their sin as without ill effect, so it can’t be bad for gays.

#23 you make some great points, and “or because they fornicated, and affirming same-sex fornication affirms their own” seems to be true for a good number of clergy who maintained orthodoxy on SSUs until they fell into sexual sins. Instead of repenting of the sin, they simply “embraced” it and along with it the LGBT agenda as a matter of “consistency.”

There really is a need for solid, objective research into homosexuality - but that seems impossible. I suspect 2 % is close to the number that believe they have no choice or that their same sex attraction is inherent. THe other maybe 2 % can be attributed to choice or fad or confusion. We still don’t know whether same sex attraction can be “cured.” There do seem to be some few examples where formerly homosexual individuals, whatever that means, have adopted or adapted to heterosexual lifestyles with some degree of persistence if not permanency. The mental and physical health statistics for homosexuals are relatively grim. Even from a secular point of view, facilitating homosexual integration into the broader society while maintaining a homosexual orientation or lifestyle might not be doing them any favors. It may be unChristian in a non-theological sense to enable homosexuality and surely it is to faciliate or endorse promiscuous homosexuality.

Plantagenets.
Well, I will show my age here. I remember the AIDS quilt going around whenI was in grad school. I actually worked in a HIV lab during that time . Thankfully I NEVER worked with whole virus.

I remember my best friend’s agony over her parents divorcing during her freshman year. What an awful time for her.

Agreed Tim and Plantagenets, It does seem that we are entering another age of cruel persecution which will demand strong orthodoxy from us and divine protection from our Lord. It is most scary when it comes from the inside as is happening in my diocese (South Carolina). There is definite feeling of betrayal by some in our parish. We live in interesting times.

You are making the assumption that “homosexual” is a type of person. No matter how you define homosexual, people mutate out of the behavior over time. It is like trying to figure out which people are permanently obese and unable to change. The difference there is that we know there are biological components to obesity, but the same has not been shown for homosexuality. Many obese people have a great deal of trouble losing weight and keeping it off. There are hormones that actually maintain the weight. No one really wants to be obese. So why aren’t we just blessing obesity instead of saying people should diet and exercise? Are we being cruel?

Further, homosexuality is increasing as women cross the boundary. How many young women who live into this behavior will get stuck in it for various reasons, since sex itself is such a positive reinforcer? Since homosexuality is primarily a behavior and not an identity, it is increasing and will continue to do so as we encourage our young people to act on any same-sex attractions, which often change for them. Lisa Diamond noted how often young women’s attraction change, and the CDC noted how often attractions change in adolescent boys. So yes, claiming these attractions as fixed and unchanging and blessing the behavior will increase homosexuality, because people have been told it is an identitiy.

Re [27] I agree with your obesity analogy. To carry it further, however, understanding obesity and the various factors and influences can be helpful. I think, if possible, research into homosexuality could potentially be helpful as well if it could miraculously be objective. I am not sure homosexual is exclusively a type of person. It is truly a behavior but it can be an attitude and an attraction and perhaps something else. Homosexual can be an identity if one so chooses so to identify, but some who claim homosexual attraction which they do not act on claim a superior identity of Christian.

There is no desire to understand homsexuality because it has been proclaimed as innate and fixed by liberals. Science has consistently shown that not to be true whenever those issues are studied. Some people are more stuck in their attractions that lead to the behavior, but there is no real desire to really understand homosexuality as being anything but fixed and innate. Until the politically correct understanding is overruled, there will be no progress in understanding homosexuality.
Regardless of how we understand it, we do not have to bless it and lure young people into the behavior. God said not to do that. If you go to VOL and google “Jacqueline Jenkins Keenan” you will see a review of my book “And the Spirit Led Me.” It has science and politics on this subject as well as the cover up in TEC of their mistakes on these issues. It also shows that leaders of the Global South are better educated on science than liberals at this point. But it is ultimately a story and Christian witness, which is why young people are willing to read it. Most people don’t want to read politics and science.

While how to deal with same-sex attracted people has been the most public of the issues in these struggles within the Episcopal “Church,” the underlying difference is theological: “Has God really said…?” With few exceptions, those who advocate for the regularization of perverse sexual practices also deny core elements of the Christian faith: they deny the ontological reality of the the Trinity, they deny the Incarnation and physical resurrection, they deny the Cross as an atoning work, and they generally reduce the Christian faith to one option among others. If it were not this issue, it would have been something else - but this was a major, crystallizing issue that revealed the vastly different worldviews.

As far as numbers of same-sex attracted people, it is likely that the percentage will increase, for as more and more teens are encouraged to participate, more and more will. Since perverse sexual activities tend to be addictive psychologically, more young people will become entrapped - although some will be able to let go.

Two women’s colleges of the Northeast, Smith and Wellesly, have observed the phenomenon of the “LUG” - “Lesbian Until Graduation.” It is chic at school but not a viable or enjoyable long-term relationship style.

I’m in no way defending TEC, but I would assume they’re thinking a little bigger than simply trying to attract homosexuals to their churches. They’re trying to attract all people who want to belong to a church that is welcoming to practicing homosexuals in the sense that it allows them full communion, ordination, etc. They’re making a bet that our culture is moving towards greater and greater toleration of homosexuality and they’ll reap the rewards.

Unfortunately for TEC (and us), most of the people who they’re probably seeking to attract are ditching church altogether.

I don’t know why anyone would go to church if they don’t believe it means anything, which to me is what the Mainline Denominations now stand for. In the old days, such churches could fill their sanctuaries because going to church still carried social respectability. That pretty much isn’t true any more, although I do see your point that some lefty liberals might still want to seem respectable to their fellow comrades by attending a “politically correct” church, even if it has explicitly or implicitly disavowed being Christian.

#s 31 & 32 - good insights. I think that the mainline churches were chaplains to a social consensus that no longer exists, and have been trying to glom onto what they perceive as the new consensus. The demographics of their membership (or at least of their leadership) make them think that this new consensus is the Democratic Party platform.

This neglects two key points:

1) The new social consensus doesn’t include church participation as a value or virtue (as #31 points out).

2) There is no new consensus. There’s intense polarization - even fragmentation - and to embrace any one group is to push away one or more others.

All in all, a disastrous and dumb strategy, whether from the base concern for institutional survival or the higher calling to witness to the Gospel of Christ.

#33 Well said, very well said. I never really understood how that pandering worked exactly until now partly because the previous social consensus never seemed clear to me. What were its terms?

You think me reckless, desperate and mad.
You argue by results, as this world does,
To settle if an act be good or bad.
You defer to the fact. For every life and every act
Consequence of good and evil can be shown.
And as in time results of many deeds are blended
So good and evil in the end become confounded.
It is not in time that my death shall be known;
It is out of time that my decision is taken
If you call that decision
To which my whole being gives entire consent.
I give my life
To the Law of God above the Law of Man.
Those who do not the same
How should they know what I do?

The old consensus was the one they called “Judaeo-Christian culture.” Yes, intellectually it was a mile wide and an inch deep, and the cultured despisers can point out its numerous flaws and inconsistenies, but its manifestations were stable families and communities; religious and civic engagement with, at the end of the day, respect and even affection for those of different traditions and parties; industriousness; and an overall emphasis on the dignity of the individual.

The rise of collectivism, strident ideology/interest group identity, secularism and just plain sit-and-watch-“reality TV” nihilism has been dramatic and unfriendly to the churches that try to play chaplain to such trends.

The problem is that there is no honest search for the truth. When TEC presented flawed science to the Anglican Communion, they hid their failures rather than owning up to them and making their case in light of the new information. They refused to engage. Ultimately, my decision to leave TEC after 5 1/2 years of trying to engage the leadership in discussion (See “Where’s the Science? A Conversation with the Presiding Bishop”) was based on their dishonesty, as well as their failure to discipline those msileading people on the truth of the gospel. I came to Jesus very late in life, and that would not have happened without pastors who themselves believed.

I had actually wanted to leave TEC and return to my original Anglican parish even before my articles were published, because I had Lyme disease and was not sure I would survive. But at that point God had moved me to Maryland where the only faithful Anglican parish, which did not focus on complaining about TEC, was still in TEC. When I finally decided to leave anyway, after my articles were published and I had communicated with the primates of the AC, I picked a non-Anglican church, thinking that I could try to make it my home. The day after I went there, I learned that the economic crash had really taken us out and we would be going back to Virginia and my original Anglican home. I was so happy. Joining them had put me in the AC in the first place. I joined them and by default TEC in September 2003. I am now the Junior Warden and we are part of the ACNA.

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